From Here to Eternity (1953) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error From Here to Eternity ( 1953 ) Not Rated | In Hawaii in 1941, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second-in-command are falling in love.

Director: Daniel Taradash (screen play), James Jones (based upon the novel by) Stars: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 21 titles created 09 Feb 2013 a list of 41 titles created 26 May 2013 a list of 40 titles created 06 Mar 2014 a list of 49 titles created 30 Aug 2015 a list of 49 titles created 2 months ago Title: From Here to Eternity (1953) 7.8/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 8 Oscars. Another 14 wins & 7 nominations. See more awards » Videos A middle-aged butcher and a school teacher who have given up on the idea of love meet at a dance and fall for each other. Director: Delbert Mann Three friends struggle to find work in Paris. Things become more complicated when two of them fall in love with the same woman.

Director: Vincente Minnelli A poor boy gets a job working for his rich uncle and ends up falling in love with two women. Director: George Stevens The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout. Director: Billy Wilder Midshipman Roger Byam joins Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian aboard HMS Bounty for a voyage to Tahiti. Bligh proves to be a brutal tyrant and, after six pleasant months on Tahiti, ... See full summary » Director: Frank Lloyd The rise and fall of a corrupt politician, who makes his friends richer and retains power by dint of a populist appeal. Director: Robert Rossen The story of Thomas More, who stood up to King Henry VIII when the King rejected the Roman Catholic Church to obtain a divorce and remarriage. Director: Fred Zinnemann A reporter pretends to be Jewish in order to cover a story on anti-Semitism, and personally discovers the true depths of bigotry and hatred. Director: Elia Kazan Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.

Directors: Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise Stars: Natalie Wood, George Chakiris, Richard Beymer The World War II phase of the career of the controversial American general, George S. Patton . Director: Franklin J. Schaffner A young soldier faces profound disillusionment in the soul-destroying horror of World War I. Director: Lewis Milestone A man from a family of rich snobs becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family. Director: Frank Capra Edit Storyline It's 1941. Robert E. Lee Prewitt has requested Army transfer and has ended up at Schofield in Hawaii. His new captain, Dana Holmes, has heard of his boxing prowess and is keen to get him to represent the company. However, 'Prew' is adamant that he doesn't box anymore, so Captain Holmes gets his subordinates to make his life a living hell. Meanwhile Sergeant Warden starts seeing the captain's wife, who has a history of seeking external relief from a troubled marriage. Prew's friend Maggio has a few altercations with the sadistic stockade Sergeant 'Fatso' Judson, and Prew begins falling in love with social club employee Lorene.

Unbeknownst to anyone, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor looms in the distance. Written by Ed Sutton <esutton@mindspring.com> The Original Pearl Harbor Story (2002 DVD Release) See more » Genres: De aquí a la eternidad See more » Filming Locations: 3 Channel Stereo (Western Electric Recording) Color: Did You Know? Trivia Fred Zinnemann insisted on filming in black and white, as he felt that "color would have made it look trivial". He also eschewed the use of any of the popular new widescreen ratios. See more » Goofs After the bar fight, Warden kicks the flick knife way off to the left, away from the bar. But Prewitt is then seen picking up the knife next to his table off to the right, towards the other end of the bar. See more » Quotes Robert E. Lee "Prew' Prewitt : You've been hoggin' the Whiskey Angelo... Angelo Maggio : Not me buddy. Its that Sandra, shes a nice girl, but she drinks like a fish! Angelo Maggio : [Picks up glass and tosses leftover outside the window] Hope there's a cop under that!

[Big laugh] Opening credits prologue: SCHOFIELD BARRACKS HAWAII 1941 See more » Connections A Realistic View of the Army 2 September 2005 | by bkoganbing (Buffalo, New York) – See all my reviews One of the big blockbuster best sellers of the post World War II years is James Jones's From Here to Eternity, a tale of the peacetime army in Hawaii before Pearl Harbor. The book was definitely going to be made into a film and it was only a question of casting to make it a success. Director Fred Zinneman had a good intuitive sense about casting here, even against type. The two principal female parts were done against type. Deborah Kerr who made a career of playing respectable women played a captain's wife who's drinking and playing around. Not that husband Philip Ober is letting grass grow under his feet either, but Kerr's latest sexual exploit involves her with the First Sergeant of her husband's company, Burt Lancaster. Donna Reed, who up to that point was best known for being Mary Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, plays a prostitute here.

A girl from the wrong side of the tracks, jilted by a rich boyfriend stateside, she's in Hawaii to make money and then go home and buy some respectability. She's not looking for romance with any soldiers, but you can't plan these things. Especially Montgomery Clift if he comes in your life. It's been argued that this is Clift's greatest role and a case can sure be made for it. His character of Robert E. Lee Pruitt is like so many who still join the army today, from small town America who have no future there and find a home in the Armed Services. What makes Clift unique is that strong sense of individualism he can't control in an organization that does not encourage individuality. Clift and Lancaster are a great study in contrasts and that's what drives From Here to Eternity. Lancaster as Sergeant Milt Warden is the ultimate professional soldier, held in the highest regard by his men. Lancaster is someone who knows how to work the system, you see it in the way he manipulates his captain. Of course he's got to be a manipulator there since he's having an affair with Deborah Kerr. He tries to protect Clift from himself and ultimately fails.

Clift has transferred into an infantry company and he was at one time a boxer. But he blinded someone in a fight and quit boxing. Philip Ober who prides himself on having several champions in various weight classes worked to get Clift in his company. Clift upsets his plans by refusing to box so he has the various sergeants give him "the treatment." Clift's best friend in the company is a tough street wise soldier from the big city named Angelo Maggio, played by Frank Sinatra. Sinatra read the book and knew this part was for him. He did everything he had to do to get that part, including working for scale. At the time Sinatra was considered a has been as singer and actor. Sinatra was right on the money in terms of picking a role. His faith in himself and Columbia Pictures and Fred Zinneman's faith in him netted him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, one of eight awards won by From Here to Eternity. By the way Sinatra credited both Lancaster and Clift in helping him through this film as a dramatic actor. Lancaster and Sinatra didn't inhabit the same Hollywood orbit, but they remained friends for life. The same could not be said for Clift.

Allegedly, some five or six years after From Here to Eternity and after Monty Clift's automobile accident while shooting Raintree County, Clift at some party at Sinatra's made a drunken pass at one of Sinatra's retainers. That got him kicked out of Sinatra's circle permanently. In fact From Here to Eternity was also the Best Picture of 1953, with Zinneman getting his second Best Director Oscar in a row after the one he took home in 1952 for High Noon. Donna Reed won for Best Supporting Acress. Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift were both nominated for Best Actor, but split the vote allowing William Holden to win for Stalag 17. Another great acting job itself. And Kerr was up for Best Actress, but lost to Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday. From Here to Eternity is a film loaded with good actors in small roles who got their first notice in this film. Ernest Borgnine, Robert J. Wilkie, Claude Akins, Jack Warden, Mickey Shaughnessy, all play various soldiers and each one is memorable. Especially Borgnine as the vicious sadistic sergeant of the stockade.

TV's Superman was in From Here to Eternity also. George Reeves who was looking to escape the typecasting from Superman has a part as another sergeant who warns Lancaster about Deborah Kerr. He gave a fine performance, but most of it wound up on the cutting room floor. That would have unforeseen tragic consequences. This is not any kind of glamorous army. These people are all too real and not very noble. The original novel was toned down quite a bit for the screen. But when the attack on Pearl Harbor comes, the men rise to the occasion, do their jobs in a more than competent manner and led by Burt Lancaster in that company. It's these men who won that war in the Pacific and the one in Europe as well and From Here to Eternity despite the less than noble portrayals of them as individuals is a great tribute to them as a team. 88 of 116 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes James Jones’s ‘From Here to Eternity’ Is Uncensored - The New York Times The New York Times Books |Author’s Heirs Uncensor a Classic War Novel Search Continue reading the main story When the classic novel “From Here to Eternity” was published in 1951, a few things were gone that had been in the original manuscript: explicit mentions of gay sex and a number of four-letter words. The author, James Jones, objected to the changes at the time, arguing in a letter to his editor at Scribner that “the things we change in this book for propriety’s sake will in five years, or ten years, come in someone else’s book anyway.” But eventually he gave in to his publisher. Sixty years later Mr. Jones’s estate has made a deal to reissue a digital version of the book that restores those cuts. The book is still in print. “It’s been on my mind for quite a few years, and the right moment just hadn’t come up yet,” Kaylie Jones, Mr. Jones’s daughter, said in a telephone interview. “My father fought bitterly to hold on to every four-letter word in the manuscript.

The publisher was concerned about getting through the censors.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story The novel follows a group of soldiers at an Army post in Hawaii a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Mr. Jones, who died in 1977, drew from his own Army experiences on Oahu for the novel, which won the National Book Award and is frequently cited as one of the best American novels of the 20th century. For the restored version of the book, the estate turned to Open Road Integrated Media, a company that has quickly established itself as a go-to publisher of backlist titles whose digital rights are owned by authors or their estates. Open Road has published backlist books by William Styron, among others, and offers a 50-50 profit share on revenues from the e-book editions. Photo James Jones, author of “From Here to Eternity,” set in Hawaii just before Pearl Harbor. Credit Gjon Mili//Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images Open Road also plans to publish nine other titles by James Jones. One, “To the End of the War,” has never been published in any form.

All will be sold on Amazon.com and BN.com , as well as at other retailers, with most titles beginning May 10. Open Road is also producing videos about Mr. Jones’s life and his works, which will be posted online. George Hendrick, an emeritus English professor from the University of Illinois, has written a new afterword for “From Here to Eternity.” The new digital edition, he said, “presents the material even more truthfully than the print edition.” Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy “The text we have has been read by millions of people, and clearly it has been one of the major novels of the middle- and late-20th century,” Mr. Hendrick said. “But what was left out of the novel because of the editing in 1950 and 1951 left out many of the gritty details.” The novel was turned into a classic movie with one of the most memorable heterosexual sex scenes of all time, a passionate romp on the beach starring Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. Mr.

Hendrick said two scenes that had homosexual content were cut from the original version of the book and have been restored in the digital version. In one, a soldier, Pvt. Angelo Maggio (played by Frank Sinatra in the 1953 movie) mentions how he has oral sex with a wealthy man in exchange for $5 or $10 that “comes in handy the middle of the month.” Another deals with a military investigation into possible homosexual activity. Jane Friedman, a former president and chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers, who is a co-founder and chief executive of Open Road, said that republishing Mr. Jones’s books was an example of Open Road’s mission “to bring the greats back to life.” “We feel that so much of what’s in ‘From Here to Eternity’ will start some conversations in the culture,” she said. A version of this article appears in print on April 5, 2011, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Author’s Heirs Uncensor A Classic War Novel.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Taps in “From Here To Eternity” « Taps Bugler: Jari Villanueva Network with Jari on LinkedIn Taps in “From Here To Eternity” James Jones, wrote about Taps in his novel that takes place in Pearl Harbor, “From Here To Eternity”: He looked at his watch and as the second hand touched the top stepped up and raised the bugle to the megaphone, and the nervousness dropped from him like a discarded blouse, and he was suddenly alone, gone away from the rest of them. The first note was clear and absolutely certain. There was no question or stumbling in this bugle. It swept across the quadrangle positively, held just a fraction longer than most buglers hold it. Held long like the length of time, stretching away from weary day to weary day. Held long like thirty years. The second note was short, almost too abrupt. Cut short and soon gone, like the minutes with a whore. Short like a ten minute break is short.

And then the last note of the first phrase rose triumphantly from the slightly broken rhythm, triumphantly high on an untouchable level of pride above the humiliations, the degradations. He played it all that way, with a paused then hurried rhythm that no metronome could follow. There was no placid regimented tempo to Taps. The notes rose high in the air and hung above the quadrangle. They vibrated there, caressingly, filled with an infinite sadness, an endless patience, a pointless pride, the requiem and epitaph of the common soldier, who smelled like a common soldier, as a woman had once told him. They hovered like halos over the heads of sleeping men in the darkened barracks, turning all the grossness to the beauty that is the beauty of sympathy and understanding. Here we are, they said, you made us, now see us, dont close your eyes and shudder at it; this beauty, and this sorrow, of things as they are.

This is the true song, the song of the ruck, not of battle heroes; the song of the Stockade prisoners itchily stinking sweating under coats of grey rock dust; the song of the mucky KPs, of the men without women who collect the rags of the officers’ wives, who come to scour the Officer’s Club–after the parties are over. This is the song of the scum, the Aqua-Velva drinkers, the shamelessness who greedily drain the half filled glasses, some of them lipstick smeared, that the partyers can afford to leave unfinished. This is the song of the men who have no place, played by a man who has never had a place, and can therefore play it. Listen to it. You know this song, remember? This is the song you close your ears to every night, so you can sleep. This is the song you drink five martinis every evening not to hear. This is the song of the Great Loneliness, that creeps in the desert wind and dehydrates the soul. This is the song you’ll listen to on the day you die.

When you lay there in bed and sweat it out, you know that all the doctors and nurses and weeping friends don’t mean a thing and cant help you any, cant save you one small bitter taste of it, because you are the one thats dying and not them; when you wait for it to come and know the sleep will not evade it and martinis will not put it off and conversation will not circumvent it and hobbies will not help you to escape it; then you will hear this song and remembering, recognize it. This song is Reality. Remember? Surely you remember? More Articles From Here to Eternity: Amazon.co.uk: James Jones: 9780340717530: Books From Here to Eternity Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Apple To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. or Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Product details Publisher: Coronet Books; New edition edition (4 Jun. 1998) Language: English Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 5.1 x 20 cm Average Customer Review: "A work of genius."--"Saturday Review" " " "Extraordinary and utterly irresistible . . . a compelling and compassionate story."--"Los Angeles Times" "A blockbuster of a book . . . raw and brutal and angry."--"The New York Times" "Ferocious . . . the most realistic and forceful novel I've read about life in the army."--"The New Yorker" A work of genius. "Saturday Review" "" Extraordinary and utterly irresistible . . . a compelling and compassionate story. "Los Angeles Times" A blockbuster of a book . . . raw and brutal and angry. "The New York Times" Ferocious . . . the most realistic and forceful novel I ve read about life in the army. "The New Yorker"" A work of genius. Saturday Review Extraordinary and utterly irresistible . . .

a compelling and compassionate story. Los Angeles Times A blockbuster of a book . . . raw and brutal and angry. The New York Times Ferocious . . . the most realistic and forceful novel I ve read about life in the army. The New Yorker" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From the Inside Flap Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart and blood . . .and, possibly, their death. In this magnificent but brutal classic of a soldier's life, James Jones portrays the courage, violence and passions of men and women who live by unspoken codes and with unutterable despair. .

.in the most important American novel to come out of World War II, a masterpiece that captures as no ther the honor and savagery of men. "From the Paperback edition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item? Censored gay sex scenes in From Here to Eternity revealed | Books | The Guardian Censored gay sex scenes in From Here to Eternity revealed Daughter of author James Jones discloses details of cuts insisted upon by the novel's original publisher Hidden story ... From Here To Eternity in its 1953 Hollywood incarnation starring Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. Photograph: Rex Friday 13 November 2009 08.23 EST First published on Friday 13 November 2009 08.23 EST Close This article is 7 years old It is one of the most celebrated images in cinema, an icon of heterosexual romance: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing as the waves crash over them in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity.

But behind the Hollywood gloss is a tale of censorship and repression, with the author of the award-winning novel on which the film was based forced to remove scenes of gay sex from the manuscript before publication. Kaylie Jones, a novelist in her own right, says her father, James Jones, was told by his publisher Scribner to eliminate both expletives and homosexual scenes in From Here to Eternity, which was based on his own experiences in Hawaii in the army on the eve of the Pearl Harbour bombing. The original manuscript of From Here to Eternity went into "great detail" about the kinds of sexual favours soldiers like Private Angelo Maggio, played in the film by Frank Sinatra, would provide to rich gay men for money, Kaylie Jones revealed in an article written for US news website the Daily Beast . "'I don't like to be blowed [by a man]'," the novel's hero Private Robert E Lee Prewitt tells Maggio in a section cut from the novel . "Angelo shrugged," writes James Jones. "'Oh, all right. I admit it's nothing like a woman. But it's something. Besides, old Hal treats me swell. He's always good for a touch when I'm broke. Five bucks.

Ten bucks. Comes in handy the middle of the month ... Only reason I let Hal blow me is because I got a good thing there. If I turned him down I'd blow it sky high. And I want to hang onto that income, buddy.'" James Jones initially refused to cut the expletives from his novel, writing to his Scribner editor that "the things we change in this book for propriety's sake will in five years, or 10 years, come in someone else's book anyway … and we will wonder why we thought we couldn't do it. Writing has to keep evolving into deeper honesty, like everything else, and you cannot stand on past precedent or theory, and still evolve … You know there is nothing salacious in this book as well as I do." He then agreed to cut a "certain number" of uses of the word fuck from the book, his daughter wrote, "in part because there was a question whether the US postal system would even deliver the book to stores because of its 'salacious' nature", although 32 still remain.

But he refused to eliminate the homosexual scenes in their entirety "because he felt this would be unfaithful to reality he witnessed", although they were extensively cut back when it was published in 1951. James Jones, she wrote, "believed that homosexuality was as old as mankind itself, and that Achilles, the bravest and most venerated fighter ever described, was gay, and to take a younger lover under your wing was a common practice among the soldiers of the time". "He also believed also that homosexuality was a natural condition of men in close quarters, and that it in no way affected a soldier's capabilities on the battlefield. What would have amazed him is that the discussion still continues to this day, cloaked in the same hypocrisy and silence as it was 60 years ago," she wrote. The US military's current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy allows gay men and lesbians to serve only if they keep quiet about their sexuality. President Obama has previously announced his intention to revoke the rule, but for the moment it remains in force. Kaylie Jones told the Guardian that she decided to divulge the details following the recent death of her mother. "She didn't think this was relevant," Jones said.

"Now that I'm executor of the literary estate with my brother, we think it's relevant given the Don't Ask, Don't Tell controversy in the American military [and] the Maine same-sex marriage vote." "In some ways", she continued, the original novel was "a better book. The gay passages are not what I'd cut from the book. If we published a new edition, I would include them," she said. From Here to Eternity won America's National Book Award on publication in 1951, while the 1953 film won eight Oscars. Publishers at the time, according to Kaylie Jones, were under pressure from a Catholic group called the National Organisation for Decent Literature, which objected to "the lascivious type of literature which threatens the moral, social and national life of our country" and blacklisted From Here to Eternity. Its members would visit booksellers with lists of "harmful" titles, informing the shops' managers if they found them in the stores. "The result? Widespread intimidation and boycott of booksellers," she wrote in her piece for the Daily Beast. "Things are much better now for writers," she told the Guardian.

"I think my father paved the way for many writers. He made the literary world safe for the F word." From Here to Eternity Sinatra, Clift, producer Adler, author Jones Many studios toyed with the idea of filming the popular novel, but abandoned it as unworkable, due to length, the conflicted view of the military and because the censorable language and subject matter impossible to depict under the still enforced Production Code. A number of screenwriters took a crack at it for different studios without success, including Jones himself, who gutted his own novel in the hopes of getting it on the screen. He wanted to realize as much money as possible from the movie sale and said, "I don't give a damn what they do to the movie, the book will stand by itself long after the movie is forgotten." His psychic powers failed to discern that, 50 years later, many more people experience From Here to Eternity as a movie than as a book. The combined notoriety would make him, at 31, a life-long celebrity, in spite of the fact that his subsequent writing would never be as well received as his debut.

Harry Cohn of Columbia paid $82,000 for the screen rights, and gossips called it Cohn's Folly. Perhaps, it was whispered, Cohn was too crude to know how crude the novel was. The military said firmly, "No film based on this novel could benefit the Army." They were concerned about the accusations of condoned brutality, and that the families of servicemen would be horrified by the language and behavior of their sons and husbands away from the civilizing influence of women. It would certainly not increase morale or enlistment, a major reason for the Army to choose to participate. But, without military cooperation everything about the film would scream "fake." Producer Buddy Adler had been a Lt. Colonel in the Signal Corps during WWII and he brought his influence to bear. Writer Daniel Taradash, a pre-Pearl Harbor inductee, wrote a screenplay that smoothed over the Army's major objections. He eliminated all references to both male and female prostitution, tempered the brutality of the stockade scenes, and punished Captain Holmes (who in the book is not reprimanded for his misconduct, but receives a promotion).

At that point, the Army relented, offering officers who would serve as technical advisors, troops, and the use of Schofield Barracks in Hawaii as a location.The film remains powerful without the excised story elements. The budget was set at $2.5 million. A nation-wide search of Army surplus stores yielded pre-Pearl Harbor style Springfield rifles, canvas leggings, campaign hats and flat steel helmets. The extras, real soldiers, drilled to learn the use of the outdated equipment. Director Fred Zinnemann insisted on black and white, "color would have made it look trivial" and the film did not use any of the popular new widescreen ratios. Daniel Taradash suggested him to Cohn because he liked the way soldiers were depicted in some of Zinnemann's earlier films. The Search (1947) was filmed on location in the ruins of post-war Germany and starred Montgomery Clift immediately after his debut in Red River. Zinnemann characterized Clift as "exuberant and full of energy, he was an electrifying personality." Two years later, Zinnemann directed The Men, a story about paralyzed WWII veterans starring Marlon Brando, and then made a film about an Italian war bride, Teresa.

In 1951 he directed High Noon, with Gary Cooper. Zinnemann was hesitant to make Eternity for a number of reasons, including an instinctive mistrust of Harry Cohn. But, he also worried, "There was an automatic respect for Federal authority. To voice doubts about any of its symbols, the Army, Navy, or FBI was to lay oneself open to deep suspicion. McCarthyism was still very much alive and filming a book so openly scathing about the peacetime Armyï¿½was regarded by many as foolhardy if not downright subversive." Clift, Reed and director Zinnemann at far right. Cohn had wanted Columbia contract player Aldo Ray to play Robert E. Lee Prewitt. He still had hopes of making Ray a big star, and thought he looked like a boxer. But director Zinnemann felt Montgomery Clift was a much better casting choice. "He was no soldier, and no boxer and probably a homosexual" Cohn ranted.

But Zinnemann felt the key to Prewitt's character was Jones' description of him as "a deceptively slim young man," and because the "story was not about a fellow who didn't want to box: it was about the human spirit refusing to be broken." Clift submerged himself in the character, learned to play the bugle (even though he knew he'd be dubbed) and took boxing lessons. Zinnemann said, "Clift forced the other actors to be much better than they really were. That's the only way I can put it. He got performances from the other actors, he got reactions from the other actors that were totally genuine." Burt Lancaster was the one actor whose casting was without conflict. His portrayal of Sgt. Milt Warden was everything a WWII hero should be, "tough, gentle, fair, virile, brave and focused, Warden was an apotheosis of postwar American manhood." (Buford). Many of his prior roles had been somewhat lightweight, and he was conscious of the importance of the film. He was somewhat intimidated by Clift's skill and intensity and said, "I'd never worked with an actor of Clift's caliber before.

I was afraid he was going to blow me right off the screen." Eli Wallach was supposed to play Maggio, but Frank Sinatra, whose acting career was on the skids, lobbied hard for the part. Cohn, along with most in Hollywood, thought of Sinatra as "the fella who danced with Gene Kelly in MGM musicals." But, Sinatra had read the novel and felt this was a role that could turn his career around, as indeed it did. Hollywood legend says he used his mob connections to secure the job, and that this incident is related obliquely in The Godfather. Director Zinnemann said in his autobiography, "At no time were horse's heads involved in the casting decision." Sinatra's salary for the part was only $8000, a savvy pay cut that revitalized his career. Clift, Sinatra and author James Jones were very close during the filming, sharing monumental drinking binges. Clift coached Sinatra on how to play Maggio during their soberer moments, "He spelled out every beat, every moment and Sinatra was grateful," said a friend of Clift. (Bosworth).

Joan Crawford had been set to play Karen Holmes but left either because of a costume dispute or because she wanted her part to be expanded. Zinnemann, Taradash and Adler came up with the idea of casting Deborah Kerr. They felt a sexy actress would make the part too predictable and the ladylike Kerr does play Karen with a hunger Crawford couldn't have mustered. Perhaps her new-found sensuality was the result of an affair with her co-star, as Lancaster confessed to a few afterwards. Kerr said of her memorable love scenes with him, "There is a chemistry that happened between us, I was not conscious of it, and neither was he. But he had such a good and forceful attitude towards his part, and I towards mine." The romance takes up relatively little screen time but plays a dominant part in the story. At first, they kissed on the beach standing up, and it was Lancaster's idea for the love scene to be played horizontally in the surf. Their embrace was filmed at Halona Cove on the eastern end of Oahu and the location became a highlight of island tours for many years. The clinch has been endlessly parodied since its appearance.

The MPAA banned photos of the kiss with the surf washing over Lancaster and Kerr as too erotic. Many prints had shortened versions of the scene because projectionists would cut out frames as souvenirs. Donna Reed, as well as Sinatra, won an Oscar for playing against type. But, her subdued performance seems less impressive today, overshadowed by her passive role in It's a Wonderful Life, as well as her tenure as a perfect tv housewife. The film won 8 Oscars of 13 nominations, the most since Gone With the Wind. Clift received the last of his three nominations for Prewitt, which many consider his finest role. While Oscars went to the supporting actors Reed and Sinatra, they are much less magnetic than Lancaster and Clift. Lancaster's powerful masculinity and Clift's introspective determination are a riveting contrast in character and acting styles. Reed and Clift "A man who don't go his own way is nothing." Prewitt struggles to be a good soldier as well as true to himself. But why, exactly, is he so dedicated to the military?

The novel and film's explanation that the Army was a home to him when his own family failed him seems weak justification for his tolerating the torture devised by a superior office determined to make him a member of the boxing team. The notion of duty has changed a great deal in the half century since From Here to Eternity reached the screen. Just like any office where the occupants have too much time on their hands, the inhabitants of Schofield Barracks clearly need something to distract them besides the petty concerns of base life. There is a chasm between the enlisted men and the officers. Soldiers like Prewitt and Top Sergent Milt Warden are proud of being in the service, yet they hate the commissioned officers under whom they serve. One of the most unadaptable aspects of the novel concerns the off-base activities of many of the soldiers, of which you see no hint on the screen. In the book, the gay population of Honolulu is significant and visible, and many of the G Is, including Maggio, spend time with them as a source of income.

Not, in most cases, involving sex, but companionship, going to their apartments, taking off their shirts, lounging around and looking beautiful and then getting paid "cabfare." Of course, some of the soldiers go farther, one even commits suicide over the fear of having "gone queer." Prewitt tags along with Maggio on one of his "dates" and doesn't have any qualms about it, he's been on the bum and knows the score on that account. Casting Mongomery Clift gives an interesting undertone to the characterï¿½was the gay subtext meant to be hinted at by the casting of a gay actor? Patricia Bosworth in her biography of Clift quotes another of his friends as saying, "Jimmy Jones was on a real macho kick, which I found phony as hell. This was 1953, but he was wearing a silver Navajo belt, silver bracelets and tight jeans, and he came on very strong sexually.

Jones asked whether Clift was a homosexual and confided, "I would have had an affair with him, but he never asked me." Is Clift's intensity as Prewitt a confluence of the author's sexual identity crisis, his conflicted fictional hero, and the performance of an actor who struggled with his own sexual identity? In all the writing about the film and its creators, this is a curiously untouched topic. Frank McShane dismisses any questions about the author's sexuality by stating unequivocally that Jones was not a homosexual. But Jones was dead (1977) long before his book was published (1985) and there is no acknowledgement of his ever having had a conversation with Jones, although he did speak at length with Jones' wife and children. Patricia Bosworth, on the other hand, Clift's biographer (1978) did speak with Jones and hints of this interesting complication. No current reader of From Here to Eternity could fail to remark at the vast amounts of prose dedicated to this topic and the complete lack of comment on it in critical writings. Jones' reputation as a decorated chronicler of World War II remains firmly on the straight and narrow.

Jane Handler, in her book, Best Sellers and Their Film Adaptations in Postwar America, tries to tackle this subject, but is defeated by her academic jargon. She does point out that other best sellers in 1951 included Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens Garden Book and Better Homes and Gardens Handyman's Book. "Clearly while middle-class Americans were perfecting a meatloaf, pruning and tinkering with do-it-yourself projects, part of their attention was drawn to the literary and visual recreations of the recent warï¿½" She suggests that the popularity was a result of nostalgia for the recently relinquished male comradarie of WWII, as the discharged vets chafed under the restraints of post-war domesticity. The two conflicting role-models, the straight-arrow Milton Warden and the somewhat feminized Pvt. Prewitt, are behavioral opposites in an all-male society. And, of course, Warden's uncompromising heterosexual masculinity deals firmly with the onset of combat, insuring his survival. Karen Holmes, played by Deborah Kerr in the film, is not an appealing character in the novel. The beach scene as written is a disaster, everybody gets sandy and fussy.

She also has an 8 year old son--missing in the film--in the 1950s you couldn't have a kid and be sexy at the same time. Yet, she and her son are given the final word in the novel, on the boat, shipping back to the States after Pearl Harbor: "Mother, do you think the war will last long enough so I can graduate from the Point and be in it? Jerry Wilcox said it wouldn't." "No," she said, "I don't think it'll last that long." "Well, gee whiz, mother," her son said. "I want to be in it." "Well, cheer up," Karen said, "and don't let it worry you. You might miss this one, but you'll be just the right age for the next one." "You really think so, mother?" her son said anxiously. * From Here to Eternity helped popularize Aloha Shirts. All the beautiful shirts in the film were made by the Cisco Company.

* (Photo Sources: Zinneman and Jones with cast from Films in Review, October, 1953, surf kiss Jerry Ohlinger's Movie Material Store, Aloha shirt details from The Hawaiian Shirt, Reed and Clift from November, 1966 Films in Review, all others from Daniel Blum's 1954 Screen Yearbook. Sources include, From Here to Eternity by James Jones, Into Eternity, the Life of James Jones, American Writer by Frank McShane, Montgomery Clift: A Bio-Bibliography by Mary C. Kalfatovic, Montgomery Clift by Patricia Bosworth, Burt Lancaster The Man and His Movies, by Allan Hunter, Burt Lancaster A Filmography and Biography by Ed Andreychuk, Burt Lancaster An American Life by Kate Buford, Against Type The Biography of Burt Lancaster by Gary Fishgall, The Good War's Greatest Hits WWII and American Remembering by Philip D. Beidler, Guts and Glory The Making of the American Military Image on Film by Lawrence H.

Suid, A Life in the Movies by Fred Zinneman, Best Sellers and Their Film Adaptations in Postwar America by Jane Handler, film review in Films in Review, October, 1953, Montgomery Clift by Robert C. Roman in the November, 1966 Films in Review, The Hawaiian Shirt Its Art and History by H. Thomas Steele. c.moviedivaJuly2003 Tim Rice’s musical ‘From Here to Eternity’ has a classic source Tim Rice’s musical ‘From Here to Eternity’ has a classic source Read next by: Sarah Hemming Tim Rice’s first new West End musical for more than a decade started with a small act of daring and a receptive ear. Many years ago, the renowned lyricist was walking down the street when a man approached him and handed him a cassette tape. The young hopeful was Stuart Brayson; on the tape were songs he had written for his pop group. Rice, whose own career had modest beginnings with a school show he wrote with Andrew Lloyd Webber called Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, was intrigued. He popped the cassette into his car stereo and liked what he heard.

The two stayed in touch and one day Brayson sent Rice an idea for a musical. It was based on the James Jones novel From Here to Eternity, about American soldiers stationed in Hawaii on the eve of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. Rice was hooked. “I thought, ‘This could really work’,” recalls Rice, whose 50-year career includes Evita , Jesus Christ Superstar and The Lion King. “It’s a great story. And story is king: if you’ve got a good story, you’ve got a shot.” So it is that, several years after that chance meeting, we are contemplating the nerve-tingling prospect of a large-scale West End musical that brings Rice back to the fray as both lyricist and producer and gives Brayson the sort of break composers dream of. The two sit, side by side, in their press rep’s office, looking as perky as puppies with a new ball, while a few streets away the cast and crew of From Here to Eternity take possession of the Shaftesbury Theatre.

Many people will know the multi-Oscar-winning 1953 film version, starring Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra and Montgomery Clift and famous for an iconic roll in the surf for Kerr and Lancaster. And the world is not short of wartime love stories. So isn’t From Here to Eternity a bit of a conservative choice for a lyricist whose biggest successes were groundbreaking musicals in their choice of form or subject matter? Rice argues that a new voice can make an old story fresh. “You could say, ‘Why do it?’ But many great musicals have been based on something else. West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet, Oklahoma! is Green Grow the Lilacs, My Fair Lady is Pygmalion. They don’t improve on the original but they are separate entities. And they are all great musicals.” The show won’t experiment in the way that, say, London Road did at the National Theatre; it is, in one sense, Rice admits genially, a return to an “older formula”.

But for him the risk – and the buzz – lies in revisiting the form with a fresh young team and 21st-century practice, with an unknown composer (whom Rice rates enormously), no household names in the cast and a director who is tackling her first West End musical. They hope, says Rice, to deliver something with real “emotional kick”. “It’s not like the Spice Girls musical [Viva Forever!], where people know the songs. Our gimmick has to be that we are good. But that’s true of all shows.” Rice is realistic and frank about failure: musicals are difficult beasts and he has said himself, for example, that the 1988 Broadway version of Chess was “an absolute disaster”. But with From Here to Eternity he thinks one secret weapon is the book. He points out that the film was only “part of the story” and that the creative team have gone back to the 1951 novel to offer their own grittier, muscular response. The novel delivers a warts-and-all description of the tensions between individual soldiers, the strain of army life and the legacy of the Depression.

But some of those warts did not make it into the film, explains director Tamara Harvey. “The film, though beautiful and classic, had huge restrictions placed upon it because they had to cut out all references to homosexuality and prostitution,” she says. “The novel is darker, dirtier, sexier and brutally honest about these men and women and the times. We are freed from all of those restrictions. So the musical has been able to be dirtier, darker, sexier and more brutal in its depiction of these people.” I head to the theatre to watch the creative team shift the show from the rehearsal room on to the stage. The Shaftesbury’s elegant foyer is crammed with trunks, cables and boxes and busy with men on walkie-talkies. An elderly man picks his way across the floor to buy a ticket. “I love the film,” he tells the box office staff. Cast members of 'From Here to Eternity' Down on the stage, the cast entrusted with responding to that man’s enthusiasm are being put through their paces in a physical warm-up. As they work through a punishing routine of star-jumps, stretches and press-ups, you can hear the clink of their army dog-tags.

They have started every rehearsal with a gruelling military drill. “It’s vital that we create a believable company of soldiers on stage,” explains Harvey. “The drill is such a fundamental aspect of army life: it’s about discipline; it’s about unity; it’s about obeying orders without question. And it’s been a very useful springboard for a lot of the physical language that we’re using in the play. There are moments when you see it in its purest form but also moments when the drill becomes part of the choreography. It doesn’t look like any other show I’ve seen.” That physicality then is woven into the texture of the show to enter into the spirit of the story: into the testosterone-fuelled tension, the love affairs, the jittery apprehension of waiting for war. The characters, says Harvey, are edgily aware of “being on the brink of something” and live theatre can transmit that intensity: “They throw themselves into things in a way that you can only do when the world might end tomorrow.” Brayson’s music too, he explains, seeks to embrace that poignancy.

Inspired by the period, he drew on swing, early rock 'n’ roll and above all blues to create an evocative texture and to give rein to the characters’ pent-up feelings. “A lot of the songs are what’s going on in the character’s head,” he says. “In the novel there are long sections where you are inside some character’s thought process.” So how has Rice found a voice to match? This is a lyricist prized particularly for his nimble wit, for the sort of jaunty couplet that can rhyme “farmers” with “pyjamas” (Joseph) or expound the “problem-free philosophy” of a singing meerkat and a flatulent warthog (The Lion King). “Whether you’re writing for an Argentine dictator’s wife [Evita] or a warthog with wind problems, you still have to make what they say believable and put yourself in the position of the character,” he says. “A GI isn’t going to speak like Noël Coward. But these guys, however rough and tough they may be, all want a bit of tenderness and love, even if they dress it up as sex. Their background stories are tragic in some cases.

That’s what we’re trying to bring out ... It’s a grown-up show.” ‘From Here to Eternity’, Shaftesbury Theatre, London, from September 30. fromheretoeternitythemusical.com Sample the FT’s top stories for a week You select the topic, we deliver the news. Select topic

Question: Who wrote the book 'From Here To Eternity'?
Answer: JAMES JONES